esophageal cancer – Page 2 – Oral Cancer News

Stephen Strasburg attempts to quit smokeless tobacco

Source: www.washingtonpost.com Author: Adam Kilgore Like any other high school kid, Stephen Strasburg wanted to emulate the major league baseball players he watched on television. He mimicked their actions down to the last detail. He rolled his pants up to reveal high socks, wore wristbands at the plate and, during downtime, opened tins of chewing tobacco and pinched some in his lower lip. Years later, having developed a powerful addiction, Strasburg regrets ever trying smokeless tobacco. Last fall, Tony Gwynn - his college coach at San Diego State and one of those players he grew up idolizing - began radiation treatments for parotid cancer, a diagnosis Gwynn blamed on using smokeless tobacco. In the wake of Gwynn's cancer diagnosis, Strasburg has resolved to quit smokeless tobacco while he recuperates from Tommy John surgery. He doesn't want to face the myriad health risks borne from tobacco use, and he doesn't want kids who want to be like him to see him with a packed lower lip. Strasburg conflates many activities with dipping, and he has yet to eradicate the habit. But he is determined he will. "I'm still in the process of quitting," Strasburg, 22, said. "I've made a lot of strides, stopped being so compulsive with it. I'm hoping I'm going to be clean for spring training. It's going to be hard, because it's something that's embedded in the game." Smokeless tobacco has long been entrenched in baseball. In the 1980s, wads of it bulged in batters' cheeks. More recently, [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-01-31T19:50:01-07:00January, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Aspirin Cuts Death Rate From Several Common Cancers

Source: Web MD Taking aspirin over a long period of time can substantially cut the risk of dying from a variety of cancers, according to a study showing that the benefit is independent of dose, gender, or smoking. It also found that the protective effect increases with age. The study is by Peter Rothwell, MD, PhD, FRCP, of John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, England, and colleagues, and has been published online by the journal the Lancet. A previous study by the same authors showed that low doses of aspirin (75-300 milligrams) reduced the number of cases of colorectal cancer by a quarter and deaths caused by the disease by more than a third. The latest study confirms the earlier results and concludes that similar effects can be shown for other types of cancers. The study looked at eight trials examining the effects of a daily dose of aspirin on preventing heart attacks involving 25,570 patients, 674 of whom died from cancer. They showed a 21% reduction in the number of deaths caused by cancer among those who had taken aspirin, compared with people who had not. The investigation also showed that the benefits of taking aspirin increased over time. After five years, death rates were shown to fall by 34% for all cancers and by 54% for gastrointestinal cancers. Participants were also followed up after 20 years, by which point 1,634 of the original participants had died as a direct result of cancer. This 20-year follow-up established that the risk [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-12-22T11:18:57-07:00December, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

A perk for coffee lovers: Java may lower oral cancer risk

Source: Scientificamerican.com Author: Katherine Harmon Raise high the coffee bean! Good news, coffee-drinkers: a new study shows your beverage of choice may lower your chances of getting oral, esophageal and pharyngeal (back-of-the-throat) cancer. Japanese researchers report in the American Journal of Epidemiology this week that people they studied who drank a cup or more of Joe daily had about a 50 percent less chance than non-imbibers of developing these cancers. The scientists based their findings on 13 years of data of some 38,000 people ages 40 to 64 with no history of cancer. According to the study, coffee drinking lowered the odds of these types of cancer even in people with high-risk behaviors (read: smoking and boozing). "Caffeine has been suggested to suppress the progression of tumor cells," senior study author Toru Naganuma, an epidemiological researcher at Japan's Tohoku University, toldScientificAmerican.com in an email. He noted that other studies have also linked moderate coffee drinking to reduced risk of liver cancer. "The evidence is pretty strong" in this research, says Ann Gillenwater, a professor of head and neck surgery at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, who was not involved in this study. But that doesn't mean you should start downing double espressos hourly. Recent research suggests that too much caffeine can lead to insomnia, anxiety and might up the risk of miscarriage in the early stages of pregnancy. Besides, the study authors point out, caffeine alone is not the answer, noting that "high-level consumption of fresh vegetables and fruit" have also been linked to lower [...]

Charlotte Parker2009-10-09T11:05:27-07:00October, 2009|Oral Cancer News|

Snuff and chewing tobacco linked to increased risk of fatal MI or stroke

Source: WebMD Author: Marlene Busko Lyon, France - Smokeless tobacco—such as snuff and chewing tobacco—is not harmless when it comes to heart health, according to a new meta-analysis [1]. A review of 11 studies from Sweden and the US, almost entirely in men, showed that smokeless-tobacco users had an increased risk of death from MI or stroke. The study, by researchers at the International Agency for Research on Cancer(IARC), is published online August 18, 2009 in BMJ. Contrary to common belief that smokeless tobacco has very little effect on health, these products have been shown to increase cancer risk, coauthor and IARC researcher Dr Kurt Straif (Lyon, France) told heartwire. "There is sufficient evidence for a causal association between smokeless tobacco and oral and pancreatic cancer [2] and probably also esophageal cancer [3]," he said. "Now, this study adds evidence that smokeless tobacco causes death from cardiovascular diseases," Straif summarized. Widespread, growing use of snus Types of smokeless tobacco used in North America and Europe include dry snuff that is inhaled, as well as moist snuff (called snus in Sweden) and chewing tobacco (or spit tobacco), which are sucked inside the cheek. These products have been around for centuries, and after a decline in consumption for most of the 20th century, use has rebounded in the past few decades, the authors write. In 2000, 23.9% of men and 4.1% of women in Sweden reported using snus daily or occasionally. In the same year, in the US, 4.4% of men and 0.3% of women were [...]

Charlotte Parker2009-08-19T12:14:50-07:00August, 2009|Oral Cancer News|